Monarch Books (New York) is a favorite
publisher among vintage paperback collectors. Many of the books had sexy themes
and sexy covers, and there were several paperback originals from
important authors. But they used certain copywriting techniques on their covers
to increase sales that weren't generally used at other publishing houses.

The first was the use of term "First
Publication Anywhere," such as on Monarch 168 and Monarch 444, seen here. The
first was printed in 1960, the second in 1964. Despite changing the cover to
incorporate the new colophon and price increase from 35¢
to 40¢, they obviously felt somehow justified in retaining the boast that it was
the first appearance of the work. This happened often in the Monarch run.
Collectors beware!

The second
copywriting oddity is a term they used on books that were supposedly non-fiction
works in their MB series. Despite the often sexually suggestive topics,
non-fiction simply doesn't sell as well as fiction. However, based on the
immense popularity of books such as those by zoologist Alfred Kinsey on human sexual
response written a decade before, they added the tantalizing statement on many
covers: "With Case Histories." This offered the reader the prospect of
first-person accounts of cases from "psychological studies" (often
from authors who had nothing to do with psychology) that otherwise might not be interesting to the average American book-buyer. It was obviously
enough to attract sufficient readers, because Monarch used the phrase many, many
times.